A blog where celebrity fact and fiction collide...Interviews with a twist... Ever wonder what it would be like to go back into the woods with Betsy Baker (Evil Dead)? Back to H wing with Val Lehman (Queen Bea) or even have a sleep over with Heather Langenkamp (Nightmare on Elm Street)? Well here is where you can experience it in all it's glory...

Wednesday, 17 June 2015

Telling Porky's... an interview with Tony 'Meat' Ganios

I looked at my clock, ah crap! It was past ten already, I must have fallen back to sleep.... "Mom" I shouted "Can I use the car?" to which she replied "No! You had it last night and used up all the gas! Your father went nuts when he saw it and took the keys with him to work... So where were you?"

"I told you mom" I replied with frustration "I was delivering meals to the old people!""Until 2 in the morning!!!???" She screamed back.Of course I hadn't been, I'd been out with my pals, hanging around town, but I wasn't going to tell her that."Anyway, shouldn't you be a school?""Free period" I lied "Mrs Leibowitz is having a catscan""A catscan?!" She exclaimed entering my room "I didn't even know she was ill?!" "Yeah... But don't tell anyone, she doesn't want anyone to know.... Don't call the school, she would kill me!! Anyway get out! I wanna' get dressed!"Mum finally exited mumbling to herself something about Mrs Leibowitz being so young and how she seemed fine at last months PTA meeting, but I wasn't listening, I was more concerned with the lie I'd have to tell Mrs Leibowitz, I'd tell her my granma had died, 5th time this year, but who was counting? Anyway with no car, it was gonna have to be the bus then....

I pulled on my pants and had a sniff of my armpits, not bad, this shirt would do for another 24 hours at least, I splashed on a bit of aftershave although had no need to shave... It will grow in... I just had to believe it. I checked myself out in the mirror, adding a touch of Brylcreem to my hair and combing it through... Yeah, I could pass, not a 10 perhaps, but a good 7....

I grabbed my bag and ran out the door, my mom calling after me "Hey, what about some

food?! I'm not running a restaurant here... You gotta eat, you're a growing boy... At least have somefruit......" But as I ran the words tiered of to a inaudible, but still shrill screech... She always worried too much about me, but, hell I was 18, I could look after myself!

I saw the stop at the bottom of our street, the bus was already there... I chased after it shouting "Wait!! Wait!!", but with a swift one fingered hand gesture out the window, the bus driver was off... I couldn't blame him really, my pals and I were not bad kids, but we were certainly no angels and that poor fella' had been at the wrong end of our pranks more than once... I remember this one time when we left of a home-made stink bomb on his bus... Oh my god it was horrible, people started puking and the bus drivers eyes started burning and he nearly crashed into the Angel Beach Wallmart and lost his job... We'd denied it, obviously, but he didn't believe us and boy, our mom's were maaaad!

I finally arrived, wheezing to the stop and slumped down in the chair, the next bus was 30 minutes away and I had nothing to do, sure I could have looked at the back log of school work I had been putting off, but naaa... I might just sit here and just watch traffic, I thought, that would be more my groove...

After about 5 minutes of busily doing nothing I heard a heavy sigh beside me and then felt a very distinct thud of someone sitting down, now either the Incredible Hulk had started using public transport, or this was a big guy who had just missed the bus too, I wasn't sure, but what I did know about this guy was that he was bigger than me...

Now I had two options, ignore the guy and continue to stare at my feet and pray that he didn't hurt me, or exchange pleasantries and hope I hadn't wronged him in the past... I opted for the later and looked up and smiled.

"Hi......................." I started, but that's as far as I got, because it was at exactly this point that I knew who this guy was... This guy was a legend, for no small reason, this guy was a hero of mine, this guy... This guy.... This guy was Tony Ganios... AKA Meat from the greatest film of my generation... The one and only - you know, apart from the sequels - Porkies... and here he was, chewing on a matchstick and sitting next to me....

Tony Ganios (born October 21, 1959) is an Greek-Americanactor. He is probably best known for his role as Anthony 'Meat' Tuperello in the 1982 hit comedyPorky's and its sequels. Tony's other well-known role is in the 1979 movie The Wanderers, as the heroic tough-guy 'Perry'. He starred in the 1990 hit film Die Hard 2 as Baker, a member of the terrorists. And he played a former football player turned mountain man in the John Belushi film Continental Divide.

He seemed like such a good guy and hey, this was my perfect opportunity to show those stuck up jerks at the school paper who said I wasn't trustworthy enough for them... Honestly, I really did see an alien outside JC Penny, yeah, he was dressed as a security guard, but you could just tell... There was something in his eyes... and yeah, maybe my grandfather wasn't exactly the inventor of Whiteout, but he did know him and my old boss was Chuck Berry - Not the actual one, but a Charles Berry!... Honest... Yeah this would show them! So, remembering all the courtesies that my mom had taught me, I politely asked him if I could do an interview with him and got out my pad and a pencil and started asking....

Now, you are a big guy... But, how tall are you?

"I’m a bit over 6’ 4” or 193 cm. I
started growing in my mid teens. Prodigious
physical size and strength has always been characteristic of the men in my
family. Believe it or not, of the latter
I’m the smallest, the weakest, and the hairiest. Frailties my Uncle Pete, who was a fairly
famous bodybuilder in the late 1950s, always attributed to mymother’s Italian blood.

Do you think it helps or hinders your career? Are you typecast?

Career wise, I find physical
size to be more or less relative. While most
lead roles are written for actors of average height, weight, and build, there
have always been more actors of that type than any other. Though the quality and depth of the roles
available to larger performers was not always present, this has started to
change. To a great extent every actor is
type cast. Can

you imagine Woody Allen
playing The Terminator or John Wayne doing the Nathan Lane role in La Cage aux Folles?"

I closed my eyes and imagined it... This dude was funny...

So what was your dream job growing up? ... and up!

"At the age of 18 I
was accepted into the School of Visual Arts in New York and seriously considered
a career as a comic book artist. I also
had a strong interest in commercial diving and in being a professional chef. My dream job in the

movies was to play The
Punisher. There is some nonsense
circulating on the internet that I was approached by the film’s producers about
the role, but turned it down. This is
utter Hollywood horseshit. I would have
loved to have given The Punisher a shot because I was a fan of the character
since I was a kid. I guarantee I could
have done the part justice. The fantasy jobs I entertained after a few
drinks were far more interesting. I
totally saw myself leading a Roman consular army against the Carthaginians in
the 2nd Punic War, or going to sea on a 17th century
French privateer whose crew would eventually turn pirate."

Now I'd read somewhere a story about his uncle literally pulling him out'a power
lifting session early to audition for a movie?

"After a mysterious phone call, he politely asked
me to stop training and get dressed, then “insisted” that I accompany him down-town
to what was supposed to be a commercial audition. The latter turned out to be an interview for director
Philip Kaufman’s cult classic The
Wanderers. I thought acting was for
sissies, but I went anyway. My uncle
Pete was the type of man whose requests were seldom refused...

He was my idol, truly larger than life, a
Greek hero from the pages of Bullfinch’s mythology. Tall, powerfully built, with piercing eyes
that flashed emerald fire when he was angered, my uncle exuded the raw physical
power and iron will of the fighting men of a bygone age. At 19 he was picked by Mae West to appear in her beefcake revue at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. Over the next five years he accumulated a
slew of impressive physique titles and his bodybuilding success burgeoned into
a short-lived stint in modelling and live television. In 1960 he was offered a contract to appear
in a series of Italian sword and sandal flicks by Hercules producer Joseph E. Levine.
Ultimately, his lack of confidence in his command of English would
prevent him from pursuing an acting career.
But my uncle always had confidence in me. Somehow he felt I had the ability to do
things he couldn’t. So on that long ago
day in 1978 did my uncle Pete

“force” me down a career path I had never
envisioned? The answer is yes, but only
because he loved me."

My mom always says that when she wants me to do my homework, I told him...

You were 23 when you appeared in Porkies… What is with the
70s/80s and 20 somethings playing kids? Did you ever stop and think… We don’t
actually look 18 (Actually what age were you supposed to be?)

"I just turned 21 when
we began filming Porky’s...

Damn 23?.... Sorry

...and was in
fact the youngest member of the principal cast.
There wasn’t much of a teen talent pool in those days, so anyone casting
a film or TV show involving adolescents would have had to hire older actors. Interestingly enough, if you look at the high
school yearbooks of the ‘50s and ‘60s (Porky’s
was set in 1954) the average 17 or 18 year old senior looked more like 30. I really hadn’t given the whole age thing any
thought back then. This may have been
because by the time most of the guys in my alma mater reached their late teens,
they either had beard shadow up to their eyeballs or were already exhibiting
signs of male pattern baldness."

Your character ‘Meat’ was meant to be… ahem… very well
endowed… Did you get much

female attention because of this? I’m not going to
ask if you actually are, but do people think you are because of Meat?

"Female
attention? No. Although over the years the character name
has inspired some choice comments from self-styled comedians in neighborhood
bars. To attract female attention, my
buddies and I had this little game we liked to play in nightclubs. We would target a group of attractive women and
immediately begin a loud and spirited argument over which one of us possessed
the smallest member. This would usually result
in one or more of the gals wanting to render a verdict by viewing our
respective packages, and to put it politely, sometimes biting off a bit more
than they could chew... "

Now, you also had visible cuts on your hands… I’ve heard that
this was due to knife practice? Can you tell me more about this?

"As an aficionado of
ancient military history and primitive arms, I studied different styles of
fighting with edged weapons, including the use of the Filipino butterfly knife. While practicing the various strikes and
openings with both hands simultaneously, I would invariably grasp one of the
knives incorrectly or by the wrong handle, which bounced its razor sharp blade
against my knuckles and fingers. This
resulted in some pretty nasty wounds, some of which went right down to the
bone. I’d have quit if only I had the
sense I was born with. A word to the
wise: Never show off moves with Bali Song blades while drinking with your idiot
buddies. I learned this the hard way."

One of my favourite scenes in the first movie is when you get drunk and fall in a bowl of chilli and had always wondered was it real chilli that
you had to fall into?

"The chili was definitely
real because no one, including me, had the brains to replace it with a
non-caustic substitute. And how many takes did you have to do?While I don’t
recall the exact number of takes we did, the scene was shot multiple times from
manifold angles. Between the hot pepper
in my eyes and nose and the gentleman who played the policeman happily yanking
out a handful of hair each time he pulled my head out of the chili bowl, filming
it was a little slice of heaven."

The films have gained an almost cult status, did you ever
imagine that it would spawn so many sequels and such a following?

"Absolutely not. The stuff we shot was considered pretty
risqué for the time (the first cut of the movie was actually rated X), and I
honestly figured the picture would be quietly shelved. When Porky’s
premiered in San Diego (I was in NY at the time), I got these frantic phone
calls from Wyatt Knight and several of the other cast members saying that crowds
were going apeshit in the theatre. At
the Westwood premiere they said the audience’s laughter was so loud, it drowned
out the soundtrack. I didn’t believe a
word of it. I thought it was just
another elaborately staged prank these clowns thought they could put over on
me. When I finally cracked a copy of Variety and checked the box office
figures, my jaw dropped. But I still
wondered if these guys could have somehow gotten to the magazine’s
publishers... "

And how much fun was it to film? It really did look fun!

"It was a blast! We wereyoung guys that could get an erection from a

passing breeze, with the
good fortune to be doing a movie in a sultry, exciting city filled with beautiful
women from all over the world. Talk
about lucky stiffs! In those environs even
a corpse could get laid. To say we went a
little whacko in Miami is a definite understatement. We lived together in a beach house we aptly
dubbed Casa del Puerco. Between the cavalcade
of naked girls, the drunkenness, weird guests, practical jokes, and internecine
fighting, it was like Fellini’s Satyricon
with rum drinks and palm trees. The
remarkable thing was that even though we all came from vastly different
backgrounds, we still got a huge kick out of each other. This quality was very apparent to audiences
and in my opinion proved to be a big factor in the success of the Porky’s
trilogy."

It was directed by Bob Clark, what was he like to work for?

"The term genius is
somewhat cliché these days, especially when used to describe filmmakers, but there
is no other way to accurately depict the late Bob Clark.A sensitive, insightful man, who delighted
in making films about childhood and children, he was a talented writer and
director who knew his actors better than we knew ourselves. He listened to our suggestions, and if
something we proposed was better than what was scripted, he had no reservations
about letting us use it. In addition to
being the father of the teen sex comedy, Bob also directed the first slasher
film, Black Christmas. Porky’s
was an account of his high school exploits in the south Florida of the mid
‘50s. He told us all the characters
except Meat were based on real people. Over
the years we developed a hunch that Bob was the real Pee Wee, an assertion which
he denied emphatically."

I think i'd heard that rumour...Do you see the rest of the cast these days?

"Because of the
autograph shows we regularly participate in and working on our new film project
Daddies’ Girls, we see each other
constantly. For our fans who don’t know,
Daddies’ Girls chronicles the comic
misadventures of a group of playboys who are paid back for all the women they
scammed with a brood of wild and promiscuous teenage daughters. The idea behind Daddies'
Girls is that the guys were die hard drunken pussy hounds from their teens
to their mid thirties. As a result of
their mindless womanizing and karma, they simultaneously became accidental
fathers, and because no sane female would put up with them, they also became instant
single parents. The
film will be shot in 3D and feature an all female principal cast, both firsts
in the teen sex comedy genre. Although
the film reunites the Porky’s cast, it has absolutely nothing to do with Porky’s.
The Daddies’ Girls storyline is simply
my twisted take on the guys’ insane experiences of raising their own teenage
daughters, and the characters we play, idiotic exaggerations of our real
personalities. In addition to the guys,
actors Jeffrey Combs, Andrew Divoff, Leslie Easterbrook, William Forsythe, and
Jim Youngs have also committed to the project.
For more info check out our web site daddiesgirlsthemovie.com. We
decided to postpone our original May 15 Kickstarter launch, but will be launching
a Kickstarter campaign in the near future to complete the project’s
financing. So in the meantime, please
like Daddies’
Girls: The Movie on Facebook and
follow DaddiesGirls1 on
Twitter."

What was Kim Cattrall like to work with? Were you on set for
the ‘Wooooooo….’ Scene? And was the laughter put on... or real?

"Beautiful, urbane,
and intelligent, Kim was, and is, a real lady.
She was kind and gracious to everyone on the set, and despite the fact
that she was used to more upscale material, was a good sport about the entire project. I wasn’t on the set the day the Lassie scenes
were shot, but I can tell you that the raucous laughter on the soundtrack was not
supplied by the actor who played the assistant gym coach, but by Bob Clark
himself. "

Now I know about young guys getting together, (I told him about the bus driver) so were there any pranks played on set?

"No one was safe. I won’t name names in order to protect the guilty,
but being around us was definitely not for the weak. We urinated in beer bottles then replaced the
caps, stole cars, defecated in cars, got people to drive to remote locations on
a wild goose chase then disabled their cars, booby-trapped toilets, sabotaged
beds, staged Machiavellian frame ups, introduced guys to girls that had VD, and
anally adulterated toothbrushes. All the
other stuff I remember is either really sick or illegal. It got to the point where you couldn’t eat,
sleep, talk on the phone, date a girl, or use the bathroom without waiting for
the other shoe to drop. You might say
some good came out of all this malicious mischief. I discovered that before attempting to delve
into the “personality” of any strange young “lady” that suddenly showed up at
the house asking for me, it was probably best to check under the hood, if you
get my drift. I learned that the hard
way, too..."

Ha!There is a scene where you all run out naked must have been fun to
film… Was it weird being naked with your fellow actors? Actually there was fair
bit of nudity all-round, was it ‘distracting’ sometimes?

"One thing we all
agree on is that no matter how much glee accidental nudity inspires in an
audience, being naked on a film set sucks. Absent-mindedly sitting can be a sharp, penetrating
experience because you might suddenly realize you’re engaged to somebody’s car
keys. Certain body parts adhere to others
whose public realignment can be humiliating if not downright dangerous. And for some bizarre reason female crew
members with whom you’re barely familiar now feel the need to engage you in
rounds of senseless discourse. For me nudity
around the other guys seemed no different than being unclad in a high school
locker room. It was the reactions of the
crew that made the experience strange. It
should have dawned on me that something was amiss when I was repeatedly asked
if I needed anything by a wide eyed wardrobe lady who by all logic shouldn’t
have been on the closed set, but I guess I was a bit slow on the uptake. Believe me, we wished we could have been more
distracted by being allowed to be around for the girls’ shower scene, but unfortunately
for us their closed set restrictions there were actually enforced."

And at what point did you realise that being naked was on the
cards? And what was it like getting ‘changed’ for the scene?

"We knew the project required
nudity the moment we read the script. Disrobing
around the other guys was no big deal. Nobody
really thought about it. We all shared
the same trailer anyway, and getting ready to do the scene was simply a matter
of undressing, throwing on a robe and shower clogs, and walking to the set
together. "

Now there must have been so many, but do you have a favourite moment during filming?

"Man, that’s a tough
one. It would probably be much easier
for me to tell you what my least favorite moment was during filming. I know I speak for all the guys when I say
that, even more than the Cherry Forever scenes where we were naked, the night shoots
of the exterior of Porky’s in the beginning and at the end of the film where we
were stuck in a filthy swamp infested with poisonous snakes, alligators, and
snapping turtles had to be the most hated.

When the 1st AD insisted being in
the swamp was perfectly safe, despite the fact that he never went near it, we
retorted, “Sure, Ken. What did you do,
order the cottonmouths and gators off the set?”"

You went straight on to do the next 2 sequels, did it all
feel the same? Was it like a reunion?

"It wasn’t like a
reunion because we were always together since we made Porky’s. Over the years we
watched each other get married, divorced, and raise kids. We were never really apart. As far as it always feeling the same, when we
filmed Porky’s 2: The Next Day, we
were asked to lay off the practical jokes, ball-breaking, and assholery so as
not to offend or frighten the sleazy yuppie studio executives that were now a
constant plague on the set. Acting like
adults was pretty hard on us. But all
attempts at maturity immediately ended when we saw our performances suffer for
it. “Hell,” we realized. ”What’s the point of making another one of
these silly things if we can’t have fun doing it?” "

You were hitting your late 20s when the third one was
released, what did you do to appear younger?

"I was actually 25
when Porky’s Revenge was released. I could tell you I went the typical Hollywood
route of plastic surgery, collagen treatments, or eating organic dirt prior to
filming, but that would be total bullshit.
In all honesty the thought of trying to appear younger never really
occurred to me. After all, if a 32 year
old Kathleen Turner could pull off being a teenager in Peggy Sue Got Married, why couldn’t I?"

I suddenly became aware of the bus... My bus pulling up at the stop, crap... Damn it, school could wait I'd never get this chance again, I'll just say both my grandma and grandpa died... together in a car crash or something... Yeah, that should work... and so I ignored the bus and after an uncomfortable amount of time, it gave up and carried on.You’ve done a lot of other things in your career, but I
have to ask about Die Hard 2… Another incredibly successful film franchise. How
did you get the part in that?

"I’ve never had any
luck with agents or managers. All the
acting jobs I ever got were either by sheer accident or through referrals from
friends. The Die Hard 2 gig was no exception.
My buddy John Fasano, the finest screenwriter I’ve ever known, worked on
Another 48 Hrs which had just
completed principal photography. Both
projects had the same casting director. So when I told John my worthless agent was too
lazy to get me in on Die Hard 2, he
had the casting director set up an audition.
I met with director Renny Harlin and was hired the same day. "

What was Bruce Willis like to work with? And as a person?

"I didn’t really spend
much time around him, but he was friendly and fun to work with."

Did he socialise with the rest of the cast?

"It’s difficult to say.
On Die
Hard 2 I only worked on the exterior scenes surrounding the airport, and in
Bruce’s defence, there was little chance for friendly banter on locations that were
20 below zero (almost -29 degrees Celsius) without the wind chill factor. When actors weren’t required on the frigid outdoor
sets, we spent our down time huddled in our trailers just trying to stay warm. "

You also worked with the late, great John Belushi, being
that the two of you had appeared in two cult comedies based in educational
institutions (Porky’s and Animal House), did you bond over that?

"Somehow he got the
number of the house where we lived and would constantly call to make sure I was
OK. When one of the guys picked up the
phone, he was so entertaining that they would wind up talking to him for an
hour. As soon as he hung up they would
ask, “Who the hell was that?” When I
told them, they didn’t believe me. John was
curious to know what Porky’s was
about, and he cracked up when I told him, “Just imagine Animal House, only dirtier.”"

What was he like?

"John was a regular,
down-to-earth guy that would give you the shirt off his back. As famous as he became, he was at heart a
truck driver from Chicago that never forgot his humble origins. He cared deeply about his fellow performers
and would not allow any actor to be bullied or mistreated on the set of any of
his films. Hands down John was the
funniest person I’d ever met, and he was generous to the point of idiocy. Continental
Divide was partly shot in Canon City, Colorado, a one horse berg in the
middle of the Rockies whose most famous native was Ann B. Davis (the actress
who played Alice on The Brady Bunch).
One day as I made the 2 mile trek through
the snow to the tiny gym in the center of town, I noticed a big, black limo
pulling up beside me. It was John. “What the hell are you doing?” he inquired. When I told him where I was headed, he
actually got angry at me for not using his limo. “Hey.
Universal gave me this rolling piece of shit and I don’t know what they
expect me to do with it. Why didn’t you
call me?” "

When filming other things, does anyone ever refer to you as
Meat?

"Not if they want to
stay healthy. But no matter where I go people
still repeat “Leave-the-kid-alone,” which was my character Perry’s catchphrase
from The Wanderers.” The
Wanderers was my first film and will always remain the nearest and dearest
to my heart."

I kept thinking to myself had I refered to him as Meat? No... No... I think I was safe... But The Wanderers, a classic piece of film history, we'd even studied it in my media class... The story of High school gangs, tough kids and football... An iconic piece of film history...

"FilmingThe Wandererswas an amazing, unforgettable experience that I’ll
treasure for the rest of my life. The wholeaffairwas surreal,nothinglike aregularmovie, andI felt likeIwasactuallytransported to another place and time. The final fight with the Ducky Boyswasabsolutely wild. It was the Bronx version of the battle ofMonsGraupius,and for all practical purposesit was real.
For an entire week hundreds ofscreaming,stuntedmadmenarmed

withrealbaseball bats,axehandles, andchains hurledthemselves at us in waveafter waveofunabated Celtic fury. It got totally out of hand, with the mayhem sometimes continuing for a
full five minutes afterdirector Phil Kaufman yelled cut. Someof the actors andcameracrew were seriously injured and had to be hospitalized.

With talented actors like Karen Allen, Alan
Rosenberg,Ken Wahl,and Olympia Dukakis, theWandererscastlistread like awho’s whoof futurefame. Of the film’s leadplayers,Ken, Jim Youngs, andIhadneitheractingtraining norprevious acting
experience. For us three the shoot was one big macho fantasy. We got a big kick out of the movie and each other. There was a time when if you spotted one of usat a nightclub or party, the other two werealwayswithin a twenty foot radius. Iloved toget to parties early
just so I couldwatchallthehot chicksbill and coo when
thesetwoLotharios made their entrance.Just so you know, upon my arrivalthesame girlswould hidetheir purses andmovedelicate chairsand otherbreakables out ofmyway. Ten years later we would reunitein an episode of Ken’s hit TV showWiseguy,which he directed. I don’t know if it was the smell of the Groom
and Clean or theceaseless ball-breaking, but it was like doingThe Wanderersall over again.

Phil Kaufman. Wow, where do I begin? A remarkable, highly literateman in a class with directorial legendssuch asDavid Lean and Alfred Hitchcock, Philis a filmmaker/philosopher that hastherareabilityto make high conceptaccessibleto theordinary filmgoer.I had thedistinctprivilegeto work with him
twice. Hisgentlestyle and presence permeates every inch ofthe set, and hissoft spokenguidanceis nevertheless delivered with the command and authority of an Old
Testament prophet. He gets to know his actorson an individual basis, figures out what makes them tick, thentailorshisdirection with pinpoint precision to get the performanceshe wants.Never didthemotto“Art for art’s sake”apply more to any
one person. Notswayed by the ephemeral
glory of Hollywood,Philisanatural storyteller thatshoots what he likes, not what isnecessarilypopular. In 1979, he passed over thebig-budgetedStar Trek:TheMotion Picture(whichhe knewwould be an instantbox office slam dunkno matter what)and went to Czechoslovakia to shootThe Unbearable Lightness of Beingrather than knuckleunder to the witlesscreative commentaryof Paramount
execs. That’s noble character!"

If they remade Porky’s (And the way things are going, I
wouldn’t be surprised) who do you think would make a good Meat?

"I don’t believe in
remaking a film unless a substantial improvement over the original is possible. With that said, Howard Stern now owns the
rights to Porky’s and has been
threatening to do a remake for years. I
really don’t have a clue who should play the character in the remake. If I was the filmmaker, I would go the
opposite route physically from our version and make Meat a thin, nerdy guy with
glasses that’s really scared of women,

but who just happens to be hung like a
Clydesdale."

And do you think today's high school comedies
stand up to the classics of the 80s?

"Withthepreponderance ofproduct turnout andtalented directors like John Hughes, AmyHeckerling, RobertZemeckis, and Bob Clarkatthe height of their
creative powers, the 1980s can arguably be termed the golden age of
teen movies.Therealsoseems to have beena greater number oforiginally themedhigh school/teen comediesmade during this decadethan any time before
or after,butmore originaldoes not necessarily mean better.Of themore recentfilms of this type,Mean GirlsandKick-Asswere my particular favorites. The success ofSuperbadamazed me becauseit violated all theconventionalrules of screen-writing,and though the creators ofAmerican Piewere admittedly influenced byPorky’s, they still managed to put their own spin on the
teensexcomedy andmade it their
own. So for the most part(I really don’t getNapoleon Dynamite)I think today’s teen
comedies do stand up to theirclassic‘80s counterparts, but what the hell do I know?"

So what do you think you would have done if you hadn’t been
dragged out of that power lifting session all those years ago?

"Gee. I guess I would have had to grow up and get a
real job."

He twiddled the matchstick between his teeth, I'd seen him do it in so many movies, that matchstick...

"I’ve chewed on wooden matchsticksas far back as I can
remember. I wish I had somemysteriouslyfascinating explanation for this, but I honestly don’t know why.
Maybe it’s because of thesoothing effect it has on me, or maybe I enjoy it because
it seems to irritateall the rightpeople. WhatI do know is that
this strangehabit proved serendipitous, becausePerry, theteentough guyI played inThe Wanderers,alsochewed a match. One of the few times Ifound myselfmatchless wasduring the shooting ofPhil Kaufman’sRising Sun, where unbeknownst to manyWanderersfans, I reprised the Perry role opposite Sean Connery. In an esoteric homage toThe Wanderers, and to the ever-present idiosyncrasies of his
anti-heroes, Philactually heldthe shot until the crewlocatedsome wooden matchesfor me."

Then I saw the bus heading up the road towards us, damn, I had some many more questions to ask, but I knew this was the one he was waiting for, so this would have to be my last question.

So quickly, before you have to go... What do you imagine the
Porkies boys would be doing now?

"Tommy Turner would
have either become a televangelist or a used car salesman, not that there’s
much difference. I could totally see
Pee Wee as a gynecologist (or at the very least a guy who pretended to be one at
parties to get girls), and Mickey doing a stretch in Leavenworth for insider
trading and income tax evasion. Billy would
have metamorphosed into one of those evil math teachers who give out tons of homework
right before a holiday vacation. Meat
would eventually be recruited by Arthur Murray’s as a ball room dance
instructor, and I believe Tim and Brian would wind up as a married couple. I think I covered everyone..."

The bus pulled up and Tony got up to leave, I shook his spade like hand and thanked him before he got on and watched it pull off... Those dweebs at the paper are never going to believe this, I thought with a smirk, and then as I watched the bus turn the corner I realised something... Something very important... Something that would make my story credible... I'd forgotten to get Tony's autograph, or a picture, or some proof that i'd met him... Oh crap, they really were'nt going to believe this now...........